12 ms·

US military finds F-35 software is a buggy mess

133 points by gregdoesit 11y ago

patrick_99 11y ago
I wonder if it makes sense to develop these next gen fighter jets. 10 years from now, could air forces just use swarms of drones? Stealth wouldn't be as important when you don't have a pilot that dies when the plane gets taken down.
juskrey 11y ago
X finds Y software is a buggy mess.
imglorp 11y ago
All software has bugs. The problem here is the mismanagement, the crooked procurement, and the rush to flight because potential customers and diplomatic influencees are fleeing.
- mrweasel 11y ago
  Mismanagement started very early to the F-35. I know nothing about planes, but I do know that if you want a software system to do EVERYTHING, it will never live up to expectation, if it's ever delivered. The rational of having just the one type of plane makes sense if you're Ryanair (who only fly Boeing 737-800). Of cause they only have ONE role for all their plane. Having just one type plane take the role of multiple others just gives you all of the complications of each of these plane all rolled up in one, plus a series of its own unique issues. I understand that Lockheed Martin just tries to deliver a product that request, but that's really the issue with many government contracts. You get what you request, and if someone tells you "Yeah, that might be a bad idea", the contract is just rewarded to a less honest company. It would be a bit shocking if no one with Lockheed Martin questioned if the F-35 was a good idea. At some point someone is going to dictate that the F-35 is done, true or not. The US will fly them for a short while and the other nations, that can't afford new planes for another 20-30 years will be stuck with this thing.
  - masklinn 11y ago
    Note that you can have multiple types of plane with very similar controls & software, IIRC that's one of the advantages of Airbus the systems are pretty uniform so once a pilot's qualified on one plane it's much easier to qualify on others.
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    The F-35 was a bad idea. In theory it made sense: fast, high tech, and stealthy. Then reality settled in: The plane can only really support a small handful of missiles, nothing close to the Arsenal the Navy's F-18 used to be able to haul into battle. It's fast, sure, but that comes at a cost to fuel efficiency, so while infantry in remote Afghanistan can get air support in less time than a pizza, "one pass, haul ass" means that if the air strike wasn't perfect, they need to call in a second strike group and wait again, not to mention the immense cost for the first few jets and bombs. The military is trying too hard to make a one-size-fits-all solution, when there has been one for close air support since Vietnam: the rugged and powerful A-10. In fact, with more and more of the fighters being forcibly retired, special ops teams are rightfully concerned, since they could previously rely on the A-10 to make 10+ passes before having to refuel, giving ground forces a significant advantage. The moral of the story is that more tech, more cost, and more complexity does not always culminate in more value. We have become so accustomed to the notion that things will always get more advanced, and therefore better, that we have forgotten to look to the past to replicate the same success in the future.
    - mrweasel 11y ago
      It makes you wonder what it would cost to built updated versions of the A-10 and F-18.
      - taf2 11y ago
        Pretty sure the F-18 has been getting updates - google f-18 stealth.
        11y ago
- mannykannot 11y ago
  I have a suspicion that the project (not just the software) came off the rails when 'and VTOL' was put in the requirements.
  - p_eter_p 11y ago
    I've seen it mentioned in at least one article that the VTOL requirement is driven by the USMC's institutional memory of Guadalcanal. They don't want to get left on the beach without air support again, so they insist on having their own aircraft with VTOL capability. How valid a concern that is is..up for debate, in the era of nuclear supercarriers and jet aircraft.
    - ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
      Especially with American global air superiority, and the fact that the Marines haven't done opposed amphibious landings since...Inchon?
      - dmos62 11y ago
        Global air superiority? Not a geo-powers geek, but sounds implausible.
    - gaius 11y ago
      ... And the Royal Navy don't forget.
- SFjulie1 11y ago
  And russians still have planes with hydraulic commands from the cold war (50 yo) that outperform F35, F16, F15, F14, B2 :) They even flew near UK exactly one year ago with a turbine powered bomber from the 50s and a nuke inside and no planes intercepted it during its 5 hours flight over "modern air farce" doted countries. Notably the UK are lacking interceptors because they planned to replace theirs with the F35.... and the F35 is not there. Does not it sound ridiculous? And the stealth technology are nowhere to be stealth for long. It leaves heat signature, signal distortions. And why do US stealth planes have so much sharp angles when we all know it is bad for being stealth? Because their software don't let them do curbs... To avoid software bugs remove software from where it is not useful
  - talmand 11y ago
    I don't understand the Russian bomber part, did they fail to detect the bomber or failed to intercept due to not having planes? Are you suggesting that the UK totally ditched all of their current interceptors and have their pilots sitting around waiting for the F-35 to show up? Are you saying the existing stealth planes are a money-making scam because we all know they built them wrong? The software doesn't allow... "curves"? Why doesn't it allow curves?
    - logfromblammo 11y ago
      Of course it allows curves! It's just that they can't have curvature less than a great circle....~ Due to the way the military produces software specifications, it is very likely that the unbroken chain of subject-matter-experts from the days of ochre pictograms on cave walls to today have ensured that the software program functions exactly the same as drawing lines on charts by hand. Since human navigators did not initially possess the capability to continuously recalculate courses, bearings, and headings, as would be required in a curved flight path, the ground-based and flight computers don't do it now. So planes still keep a fixed heading between a set of points, and any possible roundness is encoded into the turn data or a specialized, predefined pattern.
      - SFjulie1 11y ago
madaxe_again 11y ago
Am I reading this right? The software has bugs, so it limits flying time, so it limits testing, so they're reducing the number of tests it has to make to qualify? That's like going "QA is identifying a lot of bugs. QA are a problem. Fire QA. There we go. No more bug reports.". This'll end as well as it has gone so far - I wonder how many pilots will need to die from malfunctioning hardware and software for them to consider a different course of action.
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  This is how I read this as well. I would not want to be an F35 pilot.
  - pluma 11y ago
    At least they won't have to cancel night flights over too bright cockpits. cough Luftwaffe cough
- masklinn 11y ago
  > That's like going "QA is identifying a lot of bugs. QA are a problem. Fire QA. There we go. No more bug reports.". That hits so close to home it's a gutshot followed by a knee to the face.
  - bluejekyll 11y ago
    While this is meant I think a little tongue-in-cheek, it's always important for everyone to contribute value. QA is vital to the success of any project, if all it is functioning as is a Boolean check at the end that says "good" or "bad" and it keeps spitting out "bad" then it is not providing value. QA needs to be implemented throughout the process, and it needs to be capable of feeding changes into the system at different stages to make sure that it's providing feedback at the earliest possible moment. I know nothing about this project, so I don't know what their issues were along the way. Definitely they need real hardware at the end to test with, but I hope that they had mocked out the expected hardware interfaces such that they could have quicker turnaround earlier in the cycle.
Shivetya 11y ago
Reads like the typical big budget product that has a deadline that "absolutely cannot move" but does move because ain't no one going to sign their name to that mess. Really comes from having too many people in the decision making process and none of them accountable.
- mrweasel 11y ago
  Currently the Danish government keep deferring the selection of new fighter planes for the Royal Danish Air force. Partly because it's a huge decision to buy plane we can't really afford, but I also suspect it has to do with the F-35 not being done. It really seems like the plan was to just pick the F-35, because that was going to be the plane the US and many other allies fly. I have no proof of this, but I won't be surprised that the moment the F-35 is deemed operational, the Danish government will announce a contract for buy a small number of planes. In the mean time all other potential supplies are going to leave the table because they believe their losing money trying to bid, and rightfully so.
  - noir_lord 11y ago
    Honestly at this point I really wish the UK government had just bought the Super Hornet under license and handed it to BAe to modernise. It would have done everything we could reasonably expect to want to do off our carriers, is a proven design, can carry a heavy payload and has decent legs. Instead we are going to spend billions on a couple of dozen planes that are already a disaster.
    - gaius 11y ago
      No cats and traps remember? The only plane HMS White Elephant can carry is the F35, unless we re-open the Harrier factory...
Shivetya 11y ago
Reads like the typical big budget product that has a deadline that "absolutely cannot move" but does move because ain't no one going to sign their name to that mess. Really comes from having too many people in the decision making process and none of them accountable.
adrianb 11y ago
2015 article
cpncrunch 11y ago
Jan 2015
- SFjulie1 11y ago
  Indeed, no news since 2015. And that is also news because news were expected on the following topics: - using guns could cause fire ... gun delivery was said rescheduled for 2019; - senate asked for an evaluation of A10 vs F35 because A10 was to be retired and replaced by the F35 the marines where not eager for this; - storm hit could cause fire on board; - budget was drifting like hell; - the 800K$ helmet full of software had a lot of malfunctioning... And recently there is no more news. Oh yes. Canada pulled out. Australia is thinking the same. There is a new problem in the tank and ... https://www.rt.com/business/320487-f35-lockheed-martin-pentagon-us/ https://www.rt.com/business/320487-f35-lockheed-martin-penta... Heads begin to roll. But what? LM was smart : every production units has been given to enough different states and organizations not to bribe the MPs (oh no) but to improve efficiency. Airbus had trouble coordinating up to 4 countries and nearly died of it, 40+ states is logically way more complex. EDIT : Did I said that the modern version F16 with all its "modern electronic warfare" get beaten bad by its 40 yo counterpart? USA industry is declining bad. The IT bubble has even contaminated the military production.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
mrharrison 11y ago
I wonder if this project has struggled so much, because of the increasing difficulty in acquiring talent and talent getting poached in tech. Perhaps they left for SpaceX. I'm sure a project like this has an intense amount of technical debt that needs a stable workforce in order to churn out a quality product.
- ra1n85 11y ago
  Agreed, but I think there's more to it. The tech industry has a lot of turnover in general. I would imagine that turnover is only aggravated when you throw in short term contracts and a high demand for cleared individuals.
  - adrianN 11y ago
    Add the most ancient dev environment you can imagine, a hugely bureaucratic process, waterfall... you can imagine the kind of programmer who stays.
    - jcadam 11y ago
      I'll point out salaries for cleared software engineers tend to be above-average. I've looked outside the defense industry (often) and haven't yet found another company willing to match (or beat) my current salary.
- GVIrish 11y ago
  This project has struggled because the concept is fundamentally flawed, and when those fundamental flaws started causing problems the program kept cutting corners, ignoring reality, and making bigger and bigger bad bets. From the start there was the idea of one aircraft for three services with a STOVL requirement and stealth was a huge gamble. Then, inexplicably the DoD decided that instead of providing detailed requirements for the platform like they usually did, they would let the contractor write many of the requirements since 'they have the expertise in building warplanes'. Then, on top of that they decided to implement concurrent development, where they'd be doing testing and verification of the aircraft in parallel with production. In theory this would save time but in practice the reason you do testing and verification before production is to avoid expensive retrofits when problems are identified. Of course, many expensive retrofits have resulted. On numerous occasions performance requirements have been lowered, deadlines blown, and the cost is tracking to be so expensive that it's making the F-22 look like a bargain. Then there's the fact that production of parts of this program are spread out over 47 states, meaning every Congressman has incentive not to stop this runaway freight train of waste and negligence.
tobltobs 11y ago
> Mission “data load” software is also causing concern. This software is loaded on a mission-by-mission basis, working in conjunction with the permanent systems, to operate sensors and respond to conditions for a particular battleground This sounds like a stupid idea to me.
- talmand 11y ago
  Why? Why load information to the system for areas outside the plane's current mission range? Why load radar information for Southeast Asia when the plane is currently stationed in Europe?
  - tobltobs 11y ago
    > This software is loaded on a mission-by-mission ... That sounds like they would load different software modules not data.
    - talmand 11y ago
      We would need a proper definition from the source. I would assume it's a mixture of both.
a3n 11y ago
> Mission “data load” software is also causing concern. This software is loaded on a mission-by-mission basis, working in conjunction with the permanent systems, to operate sensors and respond to conditions for a particular battleground (Aviation Week gives identifying hostile radars as an example). "Damn, they have radars here. We'll have to go back and do a software reload, sorry guys." I've never been in the military aviation community. But I'd assume that ID'ing radars is so basic that you'd want to carry it around with you all the time. You know, just in case. It does everything. Eventually. Not all at once. And maybe not even when you need it.
- dtroja 11y ago
  True, but if you know you're fighting in Florida and they have 3 radars... you probably don't need to load the two radars which are known to only exist in Alaska. The world is a big place with many kinds of radars. Or maybe, yesterday, you received new information about the three Florida radars. Wouldn't it be good to be able to bring that new information when you head out today?
  - a3n 11y ago
    Sure, unless your ship's negative encounter with said radar and associated weapons is what provided the new information.
    - dtroja 11y ago
      You seem to be describing a circumstance in which no new information about the radar was available at the time the mission began. Regardless, would it not also be good to be able to record that new information so your friends can take advantage of it?
  - tobltobs 11y ago
    It does not sound as they would only load data, for me this sounds as if they would load software modules, which would result in a untestable mess.
awakeasleep 11y ago
SCF-35 Sunk Cost Fallacy - 35
tobltobs 11y ago
The financial success for the producing company of a military jet has nothing to do with his fighting capabilities, reliability or whatever. The main factor is how good the bribery engine works. Take a look at the starfighter history.
p_eter_p 11y ago
I wonder if a "Tech Surge" like the one used to repair the ACA exchange would help here, or just end up causing more trouble. I'm afraid Brook's Law comes into effect here.
- engi_nerd 11y ago
  At its base description level, the ACA exchange is something that's been done before. What made it so complex was the sheer number of systems the exchange had to properly communicate with. But there were teams of people with enough domain knowledge to come in, figure out what the problems were, and fix them. I don't know if aircraft are the same. You might run into the problem that all the people who have the knowledge who could help you solve the problem are already working on the problem! Some of this stuff is so specialized and so different than what is done anywhere else that you won't get experience with it unless you do it. I've seen this idea tried in the defense industry a number of times and it's not really successful.
btbuildem 11y ago
This will be amazing when one of those falls out of the sky over a major US city during some show-off airshow..
miander 11y ago
Needs [2015] tag.
miander 11y ago
Needs (2015) tag.
Kristine1975 11y ago
Kudos to these anti-militarist software developers. The world needs more of your kind!
ctstover 11y ago
This should be no surprise to those following the years of this national embarrassment. Yes the "potential future war" use case does justify high risk expenditures, but this crossed over into pork barrel fraud long ago. That is also on top of the antics of bidding process in the first place. I can't help but speculate as a laymen that the entire joint strike fighter concept is flawed. Part of the reason for having separate branches of armed forces is, or at least should be, strategic and technical diversity. If you consider that it is a form of investing, it becomes clearer to not put all the eggs in one basket. Cost is most damn sure a factor in warfare. Functioning fighter jets is also pretty high on the list.

133 points by gregdoesit 11y ago

I wonder if it makes sense to develop these next gen fighter jets. 10 years from now, could air forces just use swarms of drones? Stealth wouldn't be as important when you don't have a pilot that dies when the plane gets taken down.

juskrey 11y ago

X finds Y software is a buggy mess.

imglorp 11y ago

All software has bugs. The problem here is the mismanagement, the crooked procurement, and the rush to flight because potential customers and diplomatic influencees are fleeing.

mrweasel 11y ago
Mismanagement started very early to the F-35. I know nothing about planes, but I do know that if you want a software system to do EVERYTHING, it will never live up to expectation, if it's ever delivered. The rational of having just the one type of plane makes sense if you're Ryanair (who only fly Boeing 737-800). Of cause they only have ONE role for all their plane. Having just one type plane take the role of multiple others just gives you all of the complications of each of these plane all rolled up in one, plus a series of its own unique issues. I understand that Lockheed Martin just tries to deliver a product that request, but that's really the issue with many government contracts. You get what you request, and if someone tells you "Yeah, that might be a bad idea", the contract is just rewarded to a less honest company. It would be a bit shocking if no one with Lockheed Martin questioned if the F-35 was a good idea. At some point someone is going to dictate that the F-35 is done, true or not. The US will fly them for a short while and the other nations, that can't afford new planes for another 20-30 years will be stuck with this thing.
- masklinn 11y ago
  Note that you can have multiple types of plane with very similar controls & software, IIRC that's one of the advantages of Airbus the systems are pretty uniform so once a pilot's qualified on one plane it's much easier to qualify on others.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  The F-35 was a bad idea. In theory it made sense: fast, high tech, and stealthy. Then reality settled in: The plane can only really support a small handful of missiles, nothing close to the Arsenal the Navy's F-18 used to be able to haul into battle. It's fast, sure, but that comes at a cost to fuel efficiency, so while infantry in remote Afghanistan can get air support in less time than a pizza, "one pass, haul ass" means that if the air strike wasn't perfect, they need to call in a second strike group and wait again, not to mention the immense cost for the first few jets and bombs. The military is trying too hard to make a one-size-fits-all solution, when there has been one for close air support since Vietnam: the rugged and powerful A-10. In fact, with more and more of the fighters being forcibly retired, special ops teams are rightfully concerned, since they could previously rely on the A-10 to make 10+ passes before having to refuel, giving ground forces a significant advantage. The moral of the story is that more tech, more cost, and more complexity does not always culminate in more value. We have become so accustomed to the notion that things will always get more advanced, and therefore better, that we have forgotten to look to the past to replicate the same success in the future.
  - mrweasel 11y ago
    It makes you wonder what it would cost to built updated versions of the A-10 and F-18.
    - taf2 11y ago
      Pretty sure the F-18 has been getting updates - google f-18 stealth.
      - 11y ago
mannykannot 11y ago
I have a suspicion that the project (not just the software) came off the rails when 'and VTOL' was put in the requirements.
- p_eter_p 11y ago
  I've seen it mentioned in at least one article that the VTOL requirement is driven by the USMC's institutional memory of Guadalcanal. They don't want to get left on the beach without air support again, so they insist on having their own aircraft with VTOL capability. How valid a concern that is is..up for debate, in the era of nuclear supercarriers and jet aircraft.
  - ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
    Especially with American global air superiority, and the fact that the Marines haven't done opposed amphibious landings since...Inchon?
    - dmos62 11y ago
      Global air superiority? Not a geo-powers geek, but sounds implausible.
  - gaius 11y ago
    ... And the Royal Navy don't forget.
SFjulie1 11y ago
And russians still have planes with hydraulic commands from the cold war (50 yo) that outperform F35, F16, F15, F14, B2 :) They even flew near UK exactly one year ago with a turbine powered bomber from the 50s and a nuke inside and no planes intercepted it during its 5 hours flight over "modern air farce" doted countries. Notably the UK are lacking interceptors because they planned to replace theirs with the F35.... and the F35 is not there. Does not it sound ridiculous? And the stealth technology are nowhere to be stealth for long. It leaves heat signature, signal distortions. And why do US stealth planes have so much sharp angles when we all know it is bad for being stealth? Because their software don't let them do curbs... To avoid software bugs remove software from where it is not useful
- talmand 11y ago
  I don't understand the Russian bomber part, did they fail to detect the bomber or failed to intercept due to not having planes? Are you suggesting that the UK totally ditched all of their current interceptors and have their pilots sitting around waiting for the F-35 to show up? Are you saying the existing stealth planes are a money-making scam because we all know they built them wrong? The software doesn't allow... "curves"? Why doesn't it allow curves?
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    Of course it allows curves! It's just that they can't have curvature less than a great circle....~ Due to the way the military produces software specifications, it is very likely that the unbroken chain of subject-matter-experts from the days of ochre pictograms on cave walls to today have ensured that the software program functions exactly the same as drawing lines on charts by hand. Since human navigators did not initially possess the capability to continuously recalculate courses, bearings, and headings, as would be required in a curved flight path, the ground-based and flight computers don't do it now. So planes still keep a fixed heading between a set of points, and any possible roundness is encoded into the turn data or a specialized, predefined pattern.
    - SFjulie1 11y ago

madaxe_again 11y ago

Am I reading this right? The software has bugs, so it limits flying time, so it limits testing, so they're reducing the number of tests it has to make to qualify? That's like going "QA is identifying a lot of bugs. QA are a problem. Fire QA. There we go. No more bug reports.". This'll end as well as it has gone so far - I wonder how many pilots will need to die from malfunctioning hardware and software for them to consider a different course of action.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago
This is how I read this as well. I would not want to be an F35 pilot.
- pluma 11y ago
  At least they won't have to cancel night flights over too bright cockpits. cough Luftwaffe cough
masklinn 11y ago
> That's like going "QA is identifying a lot of bugs. QA are a problem. Fire QA. There we go. No more bug reports.". That hits so close to home it's a gutshot followed by a knee to the face.
- bluejekyll 11y ago
  While this is meant I think a little tongue-in-cheek, it's always important for everyone to contribute value. QA is vital to the success of any project, if all it is functioning as is a Boolean check at the end that says "good" or "bad" and it keeps spitting out "bad" then it is not providing value. QA needs to be implemented throughout the process, and it needs to be capable of feeding changes into the system at different stages to make sure that it's providing feedback at the earliest possible moment. I know nothing about this project, so I don't know what their issues were along the way. Definitely they need real hardware at the end to test with, but I hope that they had mocked out the expected hardware interfaces such that they could have quicker turnaround earlier in the cycle.

Shivetya 11y ago

Reads like the typical big budget product that has a deadline that "absolutely cannot move" but does move because ain't no one going to sign their name to that mess. Really comes from having too many people in the decision making process and none of them accountable.

mrweasel 11y ago
Currently the Danish government keep deferring the selection of new fighter planes for the Royal Danish Air force. Partly because it's a huge decision to buy plane we can't really afford, but I also suspect it has to do with the F-35 not being done. It really seems like the plan was to just pick the F-35, because that was going to be the plane the US and many other allies fly. I have no proof of this, but I won't be surprised that the moment the F-35 is deemed operational, the Danish government will announce a contract for buy a small number of planes. In the mean time all other potential supplies are going to leave the table because they believe their losing money trying to bid, and rightfully so.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  Honestly at this point I really wish the UK government had just bought the Super Hornet under license and handed it to BAe to modernise. It would have done everything we could reasonably expect to want to do off our carriers, is a proven design, can carry a heavy payload and has decent legs. Instead we are going to spend billions on a couple of dozen planes that are already a disaster.
  - gaius 11y ago
    No cats and traps remember? The only plane HMS White Elephant can carry is the F35, unless we re-open the Harrier factory...

Shivetya 11y ago

adrianb 11y ago

2015 article

cpncrunch 11y ago

Jan 2015

SFjulie1 11y ago
Indeed, no news since 2015. And that is also news because news were expected on the following topics: - using guns could cause fire ... gun delivery was said rescheduled for 2019; - senate asked for an evaluation of A10 vs F35 because A10 was to be retired and replaced by the F35 the marines where not eager for this; - storm hit could cause fire on board; - budget was drifting like hell; - the 800K$ helmet full of software had a lot of malfunctioning... And recently there is no more news. Oh yes. Canada pulled out. Australia is thinking the same. There is a new problem in the tank and ... https://www.rt.com/business/320487-f35-lockheed-martin-pentagon-us/ https://www.rt.com/business/320487-f35-lockheed-martin-penta... Heads begin to roll. But what? LM was smart : every production units has been given to enough different states and organizations not to bribe the MPs (oh no) but to improve efficiency. Airbus had trouble coordinating up to 4 countries and nearly died of it, 40+ states is logically way more complex. EDIT : Did I said that the modern version F16 with all its "modern electronic warfare" get beaten bad by its 40 yo counterpart? USA industry is declining bad. The IT bubble has even contaminated the military production.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

mrharrison 11y ago

I wonder if this project has struggled so much, because of the increasing difficulty in acquiring talent and talent getting poached in tech. Perhaps they left for SpaceX. I'm sure a project like this has an intense amount of technical debt that needs a stable workforce in order to churn out a quality product.

ra1n85 11y ago
Agreed, but I think there's more to it. The tech industry has a lot of turnover in general. I would imagine that turnover is only aggravated when you throw in short term contracts and a high demand for cleared individuals.
- adrianN 11y ago
  Add the most ancient dev environment you can imagine, a hugely bureaucratic process, waterfall... you can imagine the kind of programmer who stays.
  - jcadam 11y ago
    I'll point out salaries for cleared software engineers tend to be above-average. I've looked outside the defense industry (often) and haven't yet found another company willing to match (or beat) my current salary.
GVIrish 11y ago
This project has struggled because the concept is fundamentally flawed, and when those fundamental flaws started causing problems the program kept cutting corners, ignoring reality, and making bigger and bigger bad bets. From the start there was the idea of one aircraft for three services with a STOVL requirement and stealth was a huge gamble. Then, inexplicably the DoD decided that instead of providing detailed requirements for the platform like they usually did, they would let the contractor write many of the requirements since 'they have the expertise in building warplanes'. Then, on top of that they decided to implement concurrent development, where they'd be doing testing and verification of the aircraft in parallel with production. In theory this would save time but in practice the reason you do testing and verification before production is to avoid expensive retrofits when problems are identified. Of course, many expensive retrofits have resulted. On numerous occasions performance requirements have been lowered, deadlines blown, and the cost is tracking to be so expensive that it's making the F-22 look like a bargain. Then there's the fact that production of parts of this program are spread out over 47 states, meaning every Congressman has incentive not to stop this runaway freight train of waste and negligence.

tobltobs 11y ago

talmand 11y ago
Why? Why load information to the system for areas outside the plane's current mission range? Why load radar information for Southeast Asia when the plane is currently stationed in Europe?
- tobltobs 11y ago
  > This software is loaded on a mission-by-mission ... That sounds like they would load different software modules not data.
  - talmand 11y ago
    We would need a proper definition from the source. I would assume it's a mixture of both.

a3n 11y ago

> Mission “data load” software is also causing concern. This software is loaded on a mission-by-mission basis, working in conjunction with the permanent systems, to operate sensors and respond to conditions for a particular battleground (Aviation Week gives identifying hostile radars as an example). "Damn, they have radars here. We'll have to go back and do a software reload, sorry guys." I've never been in the military aviation community. But I'd assume that ID'ing radars is so basic that you'd want to carry it around with you all the time. You know, just in case. It does everything. Eventually. Not all at once. And maybe not even when you need it.

dtroja 11y ago
True, but if you know you're fighting in Florida and they have 3 radars... you probably don't need to load the two radars which are known to only exist in Alaska. The world is a big place with many kinds of radars. Or maybe, yesterday, you received new information about the three Florida radars. Wouldn't it be good to be able to bring that new information when you head out today?
- a3n 11y ago
  Sure, unless your ship's negative encounter with said radar and associated weapons is what provided the new information.
  - dtroja 11y ago
    You seem to be describing a circumstance in which no new information about the radar was available at the time the mission began. Regardless, would it not also be good to be able to record that new information so your friends can take advantage of it?
- tobltobs 11y ago
  It does not sound as they would only load data, for me this sounds as if they would load software modules, which would result in a untestable mess.

awakeasleep 11y ago

SCF-35 Sunk Cost Fallacy - 35

tobltobs 11y ago

The financial success for the producing company of a military jet has nothing to do with his fighting capabilities, reliability or whatever. The main factor is how good the bribery engine works. Take a look at the starfighter history.

p_eter_p 11y ago

I wonder if a "Tech Surge" like the one used to repair the ACA exchange would help here, or just end up causing more trouble. I'm afraid Brook's Law comes into effect here.

engi_nerd 11y ago
At its base description level, the ACA exchange is something that's been done before. What made it so complex was the sheer number of systems the exchange had to properly communicate with. But there were teams of people with enough domain knowledge to come in, figure out what the problems were, and fix them. I don't know if aircraft are the same. You might run into the problem that all the people who have the knowledge who could help you solve the problem are already working on the problem! Some of this stuff is so specialized and so different than what is done anywhere else that you won't get experience with it unless you do it. I've seen this idea tried in the defense industry a number of times and it's not really successful.

btbuildem 11y ago

This will be amazing when one of those falls out of the sky over a major US city during some show-off airshow..

miander 11y ago

Needs [2015] tag.

miander 11y ago

Needs (2015) tag.

Kristine1975 11y ago

Kudos to these anti-militarist software developers. The world needs more of your kind!

ctstover 11y ago

This should be no surprise to those following the years of this national embarrassment. Yes the "potential future war" use case does justify high risk expenditures, but this crossed over into pork barrel fraud long ago. That is also on top of the antics of bidding process in the first place. I can't help but speculate as a laymen that the entire joint strike fighter concept is flawed. Part of the reason for having separate branches of armed forces is, or at least should be, strategic and technical diversity. If you consider that it is a form of investing, it becomes clearer to not put all the eggs in one basket. Cost is most damn sure a factor in warfare. Functioning fighter jets is also pretty high on the list.